Anyone dubbing “Wicked,” in any country, certainly was faced with an incredible challenge. The over three-hour movie, which tells only the first half of the story of the original Broadway musical, based on the book of the same name, is full of incredible vocal performances, especially from its two stars: Cynthia Erivo who plays future Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba, the role originated on Broadway by Idina Menzel, and Glinda, played by Ariana Grande.
When it came to casting Elphaba for the Hebrew dub of the movie, titled “Mirsha’at,” the Israeli team brought out the big guns — one of Israel’s top divas, singer Shiri Maimon. The aptly named Shiri (Hebrew for “my song”) first rose to fame in the country in the early 2000s, when she was the runner-up in the first season of the reality singing competition “Kochav Nolad” (“A Star Is Born”) in 2003. Two years later, she represented the country in the Eurovision contest with the song “HaSheket SheNish’ar” (“The Quiet That Is Left”) and made it to the very respectable fourth place.
Six albums and two successful gigs as a singing reality TV judge later, Maimon, a mother of two with Sephardi and Mizrahi roots, has become one of the country’s most iconic voices, so it’s no surprise that she was chosen to dub the singing and talking voice of Elphaba. “Wicked” is Maimon’s first big movie dubbing gig, and she shared some really delightful behind-the-scene videos of her stunning vocal performance, recording some seriously impressive belting in one take, and even sharing the one time her recording was interrupted by air raid sirens. I’m seriously obsessed with her singing “koach ha’kvida,” the slightly clunky Hebrew term for gravity (literally “the power of gravitation”) in one of the movie’s most beloved tunes, “Defying Gravity.”
This may be Maimon’s first big musical movie dubbing gig, but it’s hardly her first acting gig — if her face looks familiar, that’s because you’ve likely seen it in the second season of “Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” streaming on Netflix, as Miriam. And it’s also not her first musical rodeo — the actress who has starred in multiple Israeli musical productions like “Mamma Mia,” “Evita,” a hit musical based on the Israeli movie “The Troupe” and countless kids’ musicals. She is also the first Israeli woman to star in a Broadway production. Back in 2018, she took on the role of Roxie Hart in the Broadway production of “Chicago” before traveling with the show’s touring cast to Israel for multiple showings of the hit musical at Heichal HaTarbut.
“She has so much feeling and pain and she is so strong,” Maimon said about Elphaba in an interview about the role “I connected to every nuance of this role.” She also spoke of the challenges of translating the song and how important it was for her to make the role as perfect as possible. Maimon isn’t the only talented Israeli helming the “Wicked” Israeli dub. Veteran Israeli dubber Alona Alenxander voices Glinda. Here she is singing “Defying Gravity,” which I know is Elphaba’s big number but we can forgive that because it’s such an incredible rendition:
